Go Ask Alice
Feb. 21st, 2006 12:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eye_of_a_catMy house is owned by my housemate's parents. Sometimes they come here to visit their daughter, and sometimes they come here to do landlordy stuff. These things do not go well together.
They arrived on Saturday to pay a surprise visit to my housemate. She was here, and I wasn't, and neither of us had tidied the flat. Now, it never gets that bad - nothing lives or grows anywhere that it's not supposed to - but days are busy, and we've both had chapter deadlines, and so there were large stacks of paper and piles of books on most of the surfaces. My landlords, however, are Very Tidy People. They also believe that their daughter is a Very Tidy Person. Which leaves precisely one person who could be responsible for all the terrible, terrible mess, and I wasn't here.
I get the impression that words were spoken.
Anyway, my landlords and my housemate have now tidied everything, and I got back to some very nice comments and a rather pointed note. My stuff has been politely packed into two cardboard boxes, and is sitting by the door of my room. All of it. I'm feeling ever-so-slightly judged. But while that's probably worth the price for not having to tidy up myself, and I can therefore be cheerfully oblivious to all the comments re: piles of books on kitchen tables and how they Get In The Way A Bit, Don't They?, I cannot forgive this: they hurt my geranium.
Maybe not hurt. I'm sure there's some secret cult of mystic warrior gardeners somewhere that would call it 'pruning'. But here in my world, houseplants should never be lacking eighty per cent of their plantness when you leave them for a weekend. It's looking very sorry for itself, and I'm not happy.
Its name is Alice. It is the daughter of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
elettaria's geranium. Like its mother before it, its one dream was to become a triffid, and all its efforts were devoted to that goal. It grew in several directions at the same time, and had many happy leaves. I have carried this plant around Edinburgh, sneaked it into the National Library, formally introduced it to one friend (they shook hands/leaves). And now its glory has been cast away, leaving only two short stalks and a handful of miserable-looking leaves.
Bah.
Otherwise, I'm exhausted from a lack of sleep and a lot of walking, and aching in muscles I didn't know I had from playing dodgeball and stick-in-the-mud with a bunch of five-year-olds. But it was a good, happy weekend. I've been worrying a lot about deadlines and teaching recently, feeling completely incapable of balancing all the things I'm supposed to do, and really I should have cancelled going to Saturday's party and spent the time working. Or at least, gone and then left early. Or at least, gone and stayed over and then left first thing the next morning.
At least, that would have been sensible. But I couldn't stand going back to all the things I'm worried about, and the friend who's already met the geranium very good, very calming person to be near, so I spent the rest of the weekend with him: playing games with little kids, kneeling on stone, being introduced to people who like me before they've met me because of whatever description they've heard. I did no work at all, forgot to worry about it, and then both made my chapter deadline and taught two wonderfully successful classes this morning. Apart from the geranium, I'm on top of the world.
They arrived on Saturday to pay a surprise visit to my housemate. She was here, and I wasn't, and neither of us had tidied the flat. Now, it never gets that bad - nothing lives or grows anywhere that it's not supposed to - but days are busy, and we've both had chapter deadlines, and so there were large stacks of paper and piles of books on most of the surfaces. My landlords, however, are Very Tidy People. They also believe that their daughter is a Very Tidy Person. Which leaves precisely one person who could be responsible for all the terrible, terrible mess, and I wasn't here.
I get the impression that words were spoken.
Anyway, my landlords and my housemate have now tidied everything, and I got back to some very nice comments and a rather pointed note. My stuff has been politely packed into two cardboard boxes, and is sitting by the door of my room. All of it. I'm feeling ever-so-slightly judged. But while that's probably worth the price for not having to tidy up myself, and I can therefore be cheerfully oblivious to all the comments re: piles of books on kitchen tables and how they Get In The Way A Bit, Don't They?, I cannot forgive this: they hurt my geranium.
Maybe not hurt. I'm sure there's some secret cult of mystic warrior gardeners somewhere that would call it 'pruning'. But here in my world, houseplants should never be lacking eighty per cent of their plantness when you leave them for a weekend. It's looking very sorry for itself, and I'm not happy.
Its name is Alice. It is the daughter of
elettaria's geranium. Like its mother before it, its one dream was to become a triffid, and all its efforts were devoted to that goal. It grew in several directions at the same time, and had many happy leaves. I have carried this plant around Edinburgh, sneaked it into the National Library, formally introduced it to one friend (they shook hands/leaves). And now its glory has been cast away, leaving only two short stalks and a handful of miserable-looking leaves. Bah.
Otherwise, I'm exhausted from a lack of sleep and a lot of walking, and aching in muscles I didn't know I had from playing dodgeball and stick-in-the-mud with a bunch of five-year-olds. But it was a good, happy weekend. I've been worrying a lot about deadlines and teaching recently, feeling completely incapable of balancing all the things I'm supposed to do, and really I should have cancelled going to Saturday's party and spent the time working. Or at least, gone and then left early. Or at least, gone and stayed over and then left first thing the next morning.
At least, that would have been sensible. But I couldn't stand going back to all the things I'm worried about, and the friend who's already met the geranium very good, very calming person to be near, so I spent the rest of the weekend with him: playing games with little kids, kneeling on stone, being introduced to people who like me before they've met me because of whatever description they've heard. I did no work at all, forgot to worry about it, and then both made my chapter deadline and taught two wonderfully successful classes this morning. Apart from the geranium, I'm on top of the world.
